Who Killed the Electric Car? - Relevant Groups and Their Views

FIRST NAME
COURSE TITLE & NO.
SUBMISSION DATE

WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC
CAR?

Solution 1
A group of people who have the same level of understanding and they are connected to a
particular entity is called a relevant group. As per the documentary, the relevant group is a
collection of people who have the same views for electric cars. Following eight relevant
groups have been discussed in the documentary (DocumentaryHeaven, n.d.).
1. Car companies: the car companies that produced the electrical vehicles particularly
General Motors (GM), constitute this category. Apart from General Motors there were
other companies as well such as Toyota, Nissan and Ford (Crothers, 2017).
2. Electric car drivers: these were the people who drove electric cars, particularly EV1.
They admired the ideas and concepts behind EV1. But, when EV1 was taken back
they were very hurt as well as furious about the decision and wanted it to run on the
roads again (History, 2018).
3. People who did not selected electric cars: there were many people who did not
appreciated electric cars because they had a lot of questions regarding the
performance and reliability on electric cars. Such as many thought that there is a
driving limitation presented by the electric cars which is not the case with the gasoline
cars. Some did not like the design and felt that the traditional gasoline cards should be
continued. While many of the people were not familiar with the concepts of electric
cars. They lacked in awareness. Hence, they did not approve it.
4. Oil companies: the oil companies did not like electric cars because electric cars would
bring their market down. They knew that electric cars were built on the clean and
pollution free technology which would be appreciated by the people because nobody
wanted to harm the environment intentionally. Moreover, electric cars ran on a never-
ending source of energy unlike oil which is limited.

5. Battery companies: these companies did the power source for the electric cars that is
the batteries. They wanted to build better batteries that would last longer and weigh
less. Ovonics, a battery company, built a much better battery compared to the one
used in EV1, whose shares were later purchased by GM in order to prevent him from
advertising.
6. California Air Resources Board (CARB): this organisation wanted to improve the
environment by reducing the carbon dioxide emission. They saw electric cars as a
great alternative to the gasoline ones in order to decrease the air pollution and thus
improving the quality of air. For this they proposed Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate
(ZEVM) which stated that all the car companies had to build some of their cars which
would emit zero exhaust gases. However, it was not supported by Alan Lloyd, the
chairman of carb, when he became the chairman of Fuel Cell Partnership (Leon,
2015).
7. US government: it was in a partnership with the oil companies and therefore wanted
the Californian government to take back the ZEVM. It also proposed hydrogen fuel
cells and believe that it would be a better alternative.
8. Hydrogen Fuel Cells Supporters: there were people who believe that hydrogen fuses
would be a better option as compared to the gasoline and electric cars and therefore
wanted to invest in the projects containing hydrogen fuel cells.